tonight's final segment with today's bigger picture panel joining me are my calc labor journalist and staff writer for the in these times vince colony's editor at the daily caller and sam sax progressive commentator and and writer. of the right to vote let's tackle an issue that's been in the news a lot lately the soul the soul right to vote thing if there is even such a thing the supreme court actually has come out and said this is like thirty years ago or so there is no enumerated right to vote but let's assume for a moment that correlates hope that there's something like that today in a courtroom down the street from here in washington d.c. the state texas is fighting voter id laws defending a voter i.d.

law that they put into place that would have knocked about five hundred to six hundred thousand people off the voting rolls in texas pennsylvania just knocked off seven hundred fifty thousand people from the voter i.d. rolls in texas take a look at this map that was created by mother jones magazine the states in red are states that have introduced legislation to restrict voters' access to the polls just in the past twelve months as of april this year twenty four states have tried to do this and nine including texas i always constant several others have passed new laws requiring voter i.d. these will affect three point eight million voters and as this chart shows this is the one that's the real shocker who is going to be affected by this the vast majority. of those affected by these laws are african-americans asians latinos young people college students eighteen to twenty four year olds seniors people earning less than thirty five thousand dollars

a year and the so that these are this is the democratic voters voting constituency by and large the republican voting constituency pretty much everybody else who doesn't fall out of those categories and whites eleven percent and eight percent respectively the the big group the big national group that has been pushing for these kinds of laws that would affect these groups is the american legislative exchange council otherwise known as alec they have written virtually all of these laws that have been introduced all of these states alec was founded by a guy by the name of paul why rick or why why rich it's a pretty proud aspirant why rick thank you very much and this is what he said in one thousand nine hundred eighty two a group of this was in the early days of the christian coalition in the moral majority a group of republican activists in a church in dallas texas at the at the time that he said this he was running the direct mail part of ronald reagan's campaign here's paul wired. how many of our christian have what i call them call good government they want

everybody to vote. i don't want everybody to vote elections are not won by a majority of people they never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now the matter of fact our leverage in the elections quite candid like go drop out of owning populist go down now he was in the first to say this william what rehnquist made his chops in the republican party in phoenix standing at native american hispanic voting places challenging the rights of those people to vote and was quite proud of it bragged about it we've got to drive down their numbers as it was a direct quote from william rehnquist ultimately you know. took that although it is supreme court so the question is are these new voter id laws strictly a political move maneuver to benefit conservatives at the poll or specifically republicans and beyond that is our nation better off when more people vote or from voting be too restrictive should we go back to white male property owners which is what it seems like these these laws are are doing this and when they start with you

and well as you said i mean we don't have a guaranteed right to vote as said by the supreme court said in the constitution but you know does it say corporations are people either but i think what this shows is that there should be a right to vote because since there is no federally protected right in europe you have individual states across the country that can put up their own voting requirements they can pass voter i.d.'s the laws if you look at the states that have been passing these laws they're mostly states controlled by republican legislatures and you you saw this down in florida too where you had a lot in two thousand you had lots of people vote and the court basically said you don't have a right to vote so it doesn't matter if we don't count these people's votes in florida people who said they wanted their voice to be or they intended to vote for gore but you know stuff screwed up. and for a country that you know whether or not it's true or not we like to pride ourselves as having a revolution over taxation without representation or something like that why would we want to embrace an idea where there is more representation in our government

where more people have a voice and i mean to me since this has become a. partisan issue with conservatives on one side trying to restrict voting rest is on the other side trying to. you know expand voter rights republicans and democrats i'm not sure that there's a philosophical one but yeah yeah i mean either way it sure seems to look like. there's a vested interest in keeping fewer people at the polls on the side of the right and i mean vince maybe you can speak about better than i do know that vince the reason why there is no enumerated right to vote in the constitution and this was a hot topic of constitutional convention was because god forbid if that was put in the constitution some some you know wise guy might come along and say there's a right to vote what about these what about the slaves what about these women over here you know boom all of a sudden you know the founders were rather retrograde in that regard the fourteenth amendment specifically or that actually the thirteenth of them and said

you can't forbid the right to vote based on race so now we have some very very strong laws i mean you can go into a state and really crush them if the right to vote is being denied based on race but not on anything else not that if it's being denied based on political affiliation or income so. are we is this a mess you know as you mentioned the issue of how race plays a factor i contest that the justice department has a power it probably shouldn't have any more when it relates to the voting rights act it was in one thousand sixty five going into states that it believes that it has a categorical west i think you probably know this but most viewers don't know this fact that the justice roman has a list of states which it considers to be historical bastions of. of inequality racial inequality and only those states are subject to justice department review that list was devised as a as a consequence of actual prosecutions and demonstrated harm but this was nine

hundred sixty five it's not so if there's still i mean there are still huge equalities a long race in many states and you know if i think it has these voter id laws show i mean in florida where you had governor scott going after latinos are really i mean literally literally going after latino is not just people who might go to the laundry illegals from sin from the voter rolls. i mean that's that. if he's asking the federal government to actually give them a credit registered democrats and all the bull who don't have what your beef with he all he did was ask the federal government provide me a list of compare your list to mine and say. who among these i mean the federal government's database was no not why the right diet why block out is that my block in the first place because. you're using a phony list like my energy source so i think what's interesting is that. you know there's not a lot of rich people so whenever there are you know they don't have a lot of them there's only a few people that actually benefit from these policies they can use you know

hollywood huckster kind of techniques to persuade poor people to vote for them and all kind of stuff like that but any time they get in election their mode is limit the pool and scoop you know make the election as difficult as possible we can talk about you know political action so you do blitz talk about workplace elections for unions right now the chamber of commerce has sued the nationally relations board. to prevent a rule that would allow speedy union elections in this country right now you know if the federal national labor relations board comes in and says we're going to have a union election on july twentieth the company can go to court and sue for months and months and months with all these frivolous lawsuits and delay and believe the election and this is just a continuation of the tactics what's happening now with voter i.d.'s of what they've learned in the workplace which is that you find any way to disqualify people that are rich that may not agree to their viewpoint because quite frankly there aren't that many rich people to go along with but so is that the opposite of what mike's arguing is that there are many conservatives especially those who support expansion of voter id laws or a an arid out election in

a workplace that they believe that this protects the integrity of that process that this that this protects the ability for those workers to have a reasonable vote and i'm getting republicans are concerned about the integrity of their vote why are they not concerned about the fact that the vote is being counted on machines that are owned by private corporations that are not transparent. i mean there's so many other. areas that are just so clearly that the total number of people who have been found to be illegally voting george bush spent seventy million dollars trying to track this down to be honest it was less you know over a ten year period than the number of people struck by lightning in the last six months but the opposite your baby you're spending all this time arguing about i mean we're we've talked in this panel about government's ability to be corrupt government's ability to be inefficient you're saying the opposite of course of a private process is a public process one where you have the government own the process and so they're using the pros if you're using private machines right but if you're going to have to problem is a lack of transparency should be it should be transparent no matter how it's done

it should be transparent whether it's handled by a private corporation or if it's handled by the by a government entity that could create a voting machine that's my argument but my point is that the the the canard that is being used the excuse that's being used by the republican party and this is this is a partisan thing is we've got to knock people we've got to make it harder for people to vote who are elderly who can no longer drive who live in urban environments who don't own a car who are poor who don't own a car who are students who might move around we've got to make it harder for those people to vote but there's no effort to make it harder for people who are white middle class fully employed piers here's my daughter it's very basic here's my sense of this and i think it's reasonable to expect as you and i should expect that our fellow citizen should be able to affirmatively identify themselves walk into a pole ok but they did the same thing i have for years you sure have your address that this has same time at the same time while not in every state you're right there are places where they have signature matching and then they simply state

every one and and then all additionally you have to either by way of bringing in some personal type of identification or when you talk about urban areas they should have i believe public funding for these i.d.'s to get that make sure that they're free make sure there's you know what percentage of the why that's what it is this is so here we are thirty years into our you know democracy or whatever and we have an argument that we. need to start being more careful careful about who is voting we need all these i.d.'s we need all these things there must be some problem somewhere that sprung up in the last few years to make this but there is a the voter fraud rate is point zero zero zero zero zero four percent and it doesn't exist right well ok well i'm going to something else and i want to make a serious point off of what vince said who why should undocumented workers be able to vote much be right calling them illegal immigrants is wrong because they're not citizens ok they work a lot of them be legally denied the right to vote they still get a we're going to a corporate loss of somebody going to work for an american corporation in this country they should be allowed to vote show us what frankly if you get really good

at math i think we should give them help here to where you know not to offer to tangent here but these people are these people who says that is what they want to hear they're going to hospitals they're getting sick they need to be provided you know give them health care where you've got a nine minute drive even to this country they've been living in every twenty years eagerly politics if you don't think they influence our politics you have been paying attention a lot of you for the record i think it's incumbent on every country to make sure that their economy works for their citizens but you know your point is a fascinating we've got it we have to wrap it up that's a big yes thank you thank you all think it was the night. sam much appreciated. after the break how can cities and towns across the country bring an end to the brutal reign of wall street's big banks and their influence over the american economy this fall in the footsteps of oakland california i'll explain how and when i take.

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being you know is was you were hiding under a rock in a desert last week you heard the news that hollywood star couple tom cruise and katie holmes are getting a divorce and if you heard that news and you probably also know that tom cruise is the celebrity face of the church of scientology the so-called religion founded by science fiction writer l. ron hubbard in the early one nine hundred fifty s. but once you dig into the depths of scientology is starts to look like this isn't your typical religion and that leaving the church of scientology is no easy task so despite recent reaching a divorce settlement agreement with cruise earlier today if you think katie holmes has seen the last of scientology and everything you know is wrong joining me now is mike abner a journalist makes me mark ebner a journalist and author who's been researching and writing about scientology for well over a decade he joins me from our los angeles studio marc welcome. thanks thanks thanks for joining us what is the difference between scientology and one of the more

mainstream religions or even one of the more fringe branches of the mainstream religions. well the main differences and you know i'm giving you my informed opinion having written about scientology for the last sixteen years scientology is an evil insidious totalitarian mind control cult and it has nothing to do with religion there is the doctrine is is soley the lunatic ravings of the long deceased megalo maniacal sociopath l. ron hubbard and unfortunately they employ mind control tactics you know i know it sounds all tinfoil hat and everything but you can't underestimate our no less than mine looking for let's just and it's a cult well let's compare that to a real religion i mean if somebody were to say it's not it's real now let me just

finish this i don't if i can ok all right surely in the catholic church for example you know people give up marriage for the rest of their lives you know the nuns and priests become celibate they they they give everything they own to the church they perform rituals and rights that magically turn will you know wine into blood bred into bodies and and and you know exercise demons i mean they they do all kinds of odd things and there's a complete surrender of self at least within the inner pieces of the church how is that any different than the surrender of self that happens in scientology. well it's miles apart you know for instance you know christians yes they do become nuns and priests and they value and they cloistered themselves and they do all these kind of things but the difference is that comes from an informed spiritual place you know where they are in fact worshipping

a deity there is no deity in scientology the people are worshipping a hack science fiction writer who you know came up with the idea of starting a quote unquote religion to make money to make more money and i'm quoting him now so as to make money if you want more in my opinion i think the ira should be looking at scientology not as a five hundred one c three charitable organization but more so as a money grubbing ponzi scheme of a cult you know sorry but that's a while you know i've studied i get going again i get your opinion and i'm not here to defend scientology i'm trying to understand you know a little bit about this. so religion is they believe in a god or a higher power or a deity there is no substance well my understanding is that you know religion is to believe in redemption of some sort or you know. and

scientology. minor standing is offers that by god becoming clear by years sitting down with somebody and having them ask you lots and lots of questions and you give them lots and lots of answers with these fancy machines that tell whether or not you tell the truth or not eventually you are redeemed the good the clear right i mean do i have this right i mean let's let's set aside the agilely as they are and get into the details. no that's fine and not to you know just overwhelm you and your audience with scientology jargon but going clear is a counseling process they call it audit and that is simply a function of control for scientology whereby they record all your innermost secrets all the tragic. tragedies and points of trauma that have bee following you in your life and what they do is what you've divulged all that by way of confessional it's not like you're you know you're saying it to

a priest in confidence what happens is all your innermost secrets become property of scientology and should you ever defect or become critical of scientology or you know be labeled as a suppressive person what will happen is they have no qualms about releasing that and information about you as a way of neutralizing you and or destroying you arguably you know i don't think so much in the modern catholic church but arguably that was a big part of the way that the catholic church controlled people five hundred years ago six hundred years ago was that there was instituted five hundred or six hundred years ago scientology's only been around for about fifty years and already there's a body count and there's a long history of abuse and human rights violations and right now even with what's going on with tom and katie this settlement they are back channeling and i can i could show you some of the e-mails from scientology people who are saying let's rise up and come after the media and anybody critical on websites and that sort of

thing let's report them for terms of service violations they're going after the internet again you know it's no accident that the cruise holmes divorce agreement the case itself was filed under anonymous versus anonymous if they try going after the internet again they're anonymous the hacktivist group will certainly you know they're chomping at the bit ready to go after scientology again you know you know in the name of free speech fascinating mark thank you for being with us tonight. my pleasure tom now everything you know about katie holmes divorce from tom cruise and the church of scientology is right or close to it.

well the big banks screwing over their customers is nothing new they routinely steered investors into junk mortgages and lousy investments of the banks knew were destined to fail or to day laborers falsely gave them vice president titles to sign tens of thousands of fraudulent foreclosure documents so they could illegally kick millions of americans out of their homes and all the while they paid their executives record breaking salaries all sucking more and more cash out of their customers through fine print hidden fees and deceptive practices this is nothing new and we all know someone who has been directly affected by these abuses or we've heard about their stories in the news like paul russo battled with wells fargo for years to keep this house before finally giving up and shooting himself in the head for sergeant roger bit robert bales who received a lot of media attention after he went on a rampage

a shooting rampage in afghanistan murdering seventeen afghan civilians was talked about less in his story is that three days before the massacre the bank of america was close to foreclosing on the home sergeant bales and his wife owned in california with their two kids and says she was forced to put it up for sale as the family was fifty thousand dollars underwater on their mortgage last year jefferson county alabama filed what at that time was the largest municipal bankruptcy in american history why they go broke well basically because they were screwed by j.p. morgan chase and a slew of other banks including goldman sachs. the city needed a new sewer system which was estimated to cost two hundred fifty million dollars but thanks to a crummy financing deal with the bank's toure's and the corruption of a handful of elected officials the cost of that sewer project swelled to three billion dollars like the banks have done to so many unsuspecting homeowners they sold the county alone for the sewer that came with one of those adjustable or

exploding interest rates the county would pay a low interest rate that it could afford for a few years and then the rate would just blow up and surprise that's exactly what happened and when the rates went up the city couldn't afford to make the payments on that loan and they were wiped out by the millions of dollars in fees at the bank charged just to do the deal so after furlough in city workers cutting back on cops on the street and turning off city lights just to pay off the bank's chairs jefferson county eventually filed for bankruptcy one of the first american counties officially looted by wall street other cities of follow but now one city is fighting back. back in one thousand nine hundred eighty goldman sachs gave the city of oakland a deal on its debt saying it would convert the city's hundred eighty seven million dollars in debt to a new fixed rate of five point six percent over the next decade though thanks to

the economy tanking interest rates plummet meaning the city of oakland is now paying a much higher interest rate than it would have before goldman sachs stepped in oakland has now paid twenty six million dollars more than it should have and goldman sachs is demanding more than fifteen million dollars more in fees and penalties or other rolling over becoming a miss will slave to wall street oakland is fighting back last week the oakland city council voted unanimously to terminate the bad deal the city had goldman sachs' resolution was simple yet very strongly worded saying that goldman sachs refuses to terminate the swap agreement without terminations fees or penalty with and sixty days and they will be excluded from any future business with the city of oakland basically of goldman sachs doesn't do it the city says in the city will pull all of its business out of the bank which is a whole heck of

a lot of money it's a threat that the bank has to listen to and a threat that other cities need to need to issue their own point is no city in america should be doing business with the bankers on wall street who proven time and time again they're only interested in looting instead cities across the nation should be investing their assets in local banks and local credit unions local institutions that actually care about and are derived from the communities that they belong to rather than only caring about short term profits for out of state sure. there's been a central theme coming out of the occupy movement since last fall calling on citizens and communities to move their money out of the big banks and into local credit unions millions of people move their money since last year sucking billions of dollars of wealth out of the big banks moving it into community banking institutions and according to some reports on wall street the big banks could lose as much as one hundred eighty five billion dollars by the end of the year of the

defections continue and if cities like oakland get into the game then wall street's giants will lose even more money that's the best way to put an end to too big to fail banks for all of us to walk away from these giant predatory institutions let's keep it up move your money and encourage your city to do the same and transform banking back into the safe useful and boring industry it was for most of the twentieth century that's it for the big picture tonight and don't forget democracy is not a spectator sport it requires you show up occupy something tag your it will sort of .

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